Im baaack!

So I’ve officially started life as a post uni full fledged adult.

You guys, I GOT A CAR. This is how adult I am.

I also started a job. Like a real life adult job with benefits and savings and all that shit (BUT STILL PLEASE ALWAYS BE KIND TO WAITERS). I am a social worker and i work with “at risk” teenage girls at a after school program. We provide all sorts of therapy, work on group dynamics, learn together how to trust and respect, and help them be kind to themselves.

I absolutely love my job.

It is challenging and rewarding and scary and fun. I feel like I’m in my element at last. I am finally doing what I am good at. I am hopefully making a difference.

I love my job.

And yet,

All last week I have been dragging myself out of bed when it is time to get to work. I find myself impatient on the way, annoyed at silly things. Wishing the day is over already. Even wishing for the weekend to get here faster.

My mornings are spent with down time and binge watching different t.v shows, my afternoons and evenings with a job I love, and at night I get to go dance at my studio, rehearse for the spring musical with my community theater group, and go out with friends.

So why? Why have I been dreading getting out of my pj’s every single morning this week? Why have I been waiting on the weekend to come like any other job I’ve ever had? When I get to work and the girls arrive I forget my annoyance and bad mood. I have fun. I end the day happy. Most days of course, some are always harder than others.

But I am happy and fulfilled so why am I also not?

This bugged the crap out of me all week. It was a nagging voice in the not so back of my head. I felt ungrateful and spoiled. What more could I possibly want I inner yelled at myself as I started the car on my way to work this afternoon.

And then, I realized even if my job was being a professional taster for Ben&Jerry’s ice-cream at some point staying in bed all day and doing whatever I wanted would STILL be more tempting (although to be fair I would probably have to be working there a long time to not want to go in and eat ice cream all day). My point being, humans are generally lazy. I am more so than some and a lot less than others. But I still love spending all day long in my pajamas, and I still get to dread having to go somewhere, anywhere, just because that is what I have to do. I can love my job and my bed at the same time, like the way a parent loves both kids equally (or like only have a slightly more favorite one..) that’s just the way life is and that’s OK.

The thing is you still need to make sure you are grateful for all the days you get, the good ones and the bad ones. Because the worst, even worse then absolutely despising your job or daily routine, is being indifferent to it, to life. Trust me I’ve had times at both and the former is definitely more dangerous to our general happiness as human beings. Nowadays, with all the social media and the way we speed through a thousand emotions in a second as we scroll through our feed (oh look a cute puppy video-oh no someones parent died-niiice dress-oo that new episode is out-shit the news is really bad-YAY happy birthday to you), it is just too easy to become anesthetized to human life, to our highs and lows and in-between’s.

So take a moment and appreciate your crappy day if you are having one.

see ya out there!

Beginning

This blog is called voices in my head. I figured Iv’e spent enough time listening to them it was about time to let other people in on all the noise.

I really have no idea if someone will ever really read this, but I spent most of my life up until now writing a journal and there’s something satisfying about sending these words of mine out to the world and having no control over where they end up and who they end up talking to. Scary as hell though. If you’re out there reading this, my dear random person, i hope i don’t come off too crazy. because I swear I’m just the right amount.

you know, there are different kinds of invisible. There’s the kind we all learn about in high school. “The Classic” if you will. That shy girl or boy. quiet,doesn’t make eye contact,small, with a loneliness that’s hard to miss. And we’re taught to notice them. keep our eyes out and aware so that we can help them feel a little less invisible. a standard “coming of age” Hollywood movie.

But there’s another kind of invisible that no one tells you about. And if you don’t know how to look its really hard to see. because this girl smiles and talks. she’s caring and a part of the group.

But if you knew how to look you’d see that she may smile, but inside all she wants to do is scream. she talks, but no one listens. she’s caring, but that’s usually the only thing people have to say about her. she’s a part of the group, but the group doesn’t even know she’s there.

and her loneliness? her loneliness is the worse kind because no one can even see it. Its covered up with colors and butterflies and smiles.

so she starts to write, letting her words out to the world and hoping someone will hear them and really see her…

I went to Greece and it was amazing

Its almost exactly a year since I wrote about my last attempt to travel.

Almost a year since I was all broken inside, full only of self hatred, pain and crippling loneliness.

It’s mind boggling what a difference a year can make. Amazing how much of myself I discovered and reinvented this past year. Incredible how I used to just wish it all would stop. The anxiety and the helplessness. How much I wanted to be anyone other than myself.

And now, I see how this incredibly hard year (and all of the others before it..) made me stronger than I ever thought I could be.

unfortunately it seems a lot of my writing came from pain and sadness, which means that I have spent countless hours in the last few months sitting in front of a blank screen willing the words to come on out. But alas, the muse has disappeared.

and so for now I leave you with this;

When you are on your own, full of shadows and pain and you feel like you can’t breathe -surround yourself with loving and caring people, and try your best to accept yourself with all of you imperfections. Everything else will fall in to place.

I can promise you that.

 

UP AND DOWN AGAIN

Anyone who’s ever suffered from anxiety will tell you that there is no permanent fix. You can regulate your medication to the best of your ability, you can learn to read your mood swings, spot your triggers, take care of your mental health with meditation and exercise. You can do everything by the book and still all of a sudden wake up one morning and just feel off. Like there is this sudden dip and your mind is telling you “nope, not today”.

Today you are going to feel distracted and foggy. You will get through your day just slightly to the left of what you normally do. Your not going to notice it at first either, you will just assume you are tired. But when you grab a second in the bathroom you will suddenly realize your teeth are clenched. And when you have a silly altercation with the asshole bus driver on the way home you will suddenly feel a strong need to cry and not understand why. The exercise class you planned to go to in the late afternoon suddenly seems unimportant and you let it slip away with a nap to get back your strength. “It’s just lack of sleep” you continue to tell yourself “It’s coming up on finals, you have a lot of papers to write and ten different things to juggle”.

So you wash your face, make yourself a cup of coffee and settle down in front of your computer. But as you begin to type out the introduction to your latest deadline you feel a familiar lump in your throat. Your breath starts to come quick, your heart start to race and for just a second the fog clears from your brain enough to realize what is going on. You just haven’t had one of these in so long its like you almost forgot.

And then you realize. You haven’t meditated properly in weeks. You kept pushing it off waiting for the next time you had enough time. The exercise class you “forgot” about today was not the first time this month. Your diet has started to include a lot more carbs and not enough vegetables. You didn’t have the energy to make proper food. Assignments and due dates and exams are pilling up and you stopped writing to do lists.

You got lost in the pile of adulthood and didn’t even realize it. so your dear old friend Anxiety has come knocking in to say hello, except this time he didn’t come through the front door with a bang. No, this time, he snuck in around the back and slowly took up all of the space and almost shoved you right back out the window.

And you realize this, and you sit there furious at yourself for letting things get this far. feeling so frustrated and like it’s just too much work to go ahead and start picking up the pieces again. And you want to scream and break something and maybe just go back to sleep. Shut the world out and not have to deal with everything.

But then you realize that that is exactly what Anxiety wants. That is his plan.

So you wipe away your tears and open a new tab on your computer. You let the voices out of your head for the first time in ages.

Then you make a plan.

Your own plan.

 

The In Between

 

I have never been much of a night person.

I get impatient and crabby as the sun goes down, and I never study after 21:00. It’s like my brain shuts off for the day and only turns back up again around 7 AM after coffee.

Lately though I haven’t been sleeping that well. My mind is full of thoughts and decisions to be made. The constant “so what’s next?” pounding my brain from the inside out leaves little space for a peaceful nights rest. And I realized something about the night.

There is  a stillness that comes with the late hours of the night (or early hours of the morning really). A stillness that is cool and calming. It envelops you and makes you feel like you are the only person in the world, but not in a bad way at all. In a “enjoy this time to be you and feel whatever you want” way. It’s like the in – between. In between morning and now, right before the sun comes up and we start all over again. a park bench to rest on. The air at 2 AM seems easier to breathe somehow, maybe because it isn’t bogged down with all of the gas and smoke and tainted air from all of the traffic. when I look at the sky from my bedroom window it is brighter then I would have though. Tonight is a full moon, I realize, and the stars are all blinking down on me.

And as I sit and type this the time flows on and the small hand on my watch inches closer to 3 AM. My eyes begin to droop, and I take a breath of fresh cool middle of the night silent air.

 

Full House

It’s the Passover holidays round here and my entire family is in for the week.

Grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, all of my siblings and my adorable nieces. The house is full of love and from some the inevitable constant bickering. Noise all around, toys everywhere. Every single bed is full, and then some. Last night I slept on an inflatable mattress that deflated half way through the night.  Since my grandparents live overseas we only get to see them around once a year if we’re lucky. It makes the feeling of obligation to spend as much time together all the more  strong especially as they get older (my grandpa turns 90 this summer, refuses to use a cane, and walks the fifteen minute walk to and from synagogue every single Friday and Saturday come rain, sun or snow – this is NOT an exaggeration on my part).

But man, it can get intense.

Sometime I feel like I was dumped straight in the middle of a sitcom. Some sort of weird cross between All in the Family, Full House and Seinfeld. You know that scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Where the small white family shows up and is bombarded with all of the Nicks, Nicos and lamb?

well, that’s my family. We’re not Greek but we are Jewish so it works pretty much the same way.

As a kid I would ask my father for a lift to a friend, and suddenly everybody is piled in to the minivan, coming along for the 5 min ride to send me off as though I was going away to camp for a month. There was forever a constant commentary on everything and anything; backseat driving, over-the-shoulder cooking, ten mentions a day on how much weight I or one of my sisters had lost, if our hair was nicer up or down (up), long or short (short). One of my uncles sat us down every summer to watch an hour long National Geographic DVD, if we ever went out to eat there was never enough when all of the food was brought out but then somehow too much when we finished eating. There was no such thing as throwing away food, a remnant of my grandmother’s poor childhood. It goes on and on and on for many more pages. Don’t even get me started on the very not subtle hints about when I will be settling down that started the day I turned 18.

And among all of this chaos and crazy, there is and always was so much love.

They say you can’t pick your family, but if I could- even though they pretty much drive me insane about 75% of the time- I would still pick mine. And I would want it all exactly like this.

Wishing you  happy holidays from a little corner in the backyard under the pretense of writing a mandatory paper for school because that is the only way I managed to get away for half an hour.

What are your family’s like? I would really love to hear!

XX

 

 

A Poem part two

Thoughts rush in, swirl and spin and stop.

hopes and dreams, fear-

It freezes and shuts you down,

shuts you up.

 

close your eyes and breath,

deep. slow. free

let go of it all, hold on to possibility.

there is silence now,

that is filled with want.

filled with drive, fire and fight,

and still some fear

worry and care.

 

open your eyes now.

places,

let’s begin.

 

 

when the universe has a different plan

I haven’t posted anything in ages.

CONFESSION: I have about six posts saved in drafts that I started on a bus ride or in line for the supermarket or after a crappy shift at work and then when I got home lost the energy to write.

CONFESSION #2: I am happy. happier then I have been in a long time. This is good obviously. but it also made me realize that a lot of my writing comes from a place of loneliness and sadness and just not being able to hold it in any longer. I paint through calm. I dance through joy and heartbreak. I write through pain. that is just the way it is. or was. because although the words seem to come easier when I have that burning feeling in my eyes, and while I am overjoyed to come to the realization that I have been spending the time once left to theses pages, now out living my much deserved life, still I miss the feeling. I miss the magic that happens when a thought becomes something a little more real and the words flow through my body to the tips of my fingers and out on to the keyboard.

CONFESSION #3: I am now in my second to last exam period of my degree and will do anything and everything to take a break from studying. And so as welcome back, new and improved me present I would like to regale my patient and faithful readers with a story.

This story begins on a cold rainy afternoon while a young women was getting ready to leave for the evening shift at the sushi bar she waitress-ed at to pay the bills. On that particular day the young woman, was feeling down and to try and make herself feel better about going in to work while she really wanted to stay in bed and watch clips from old Tony awards she decided she would play a game. During her work shift she would “collect” interesting customers she met that day, all the funny interactions that tend to happen when you work in costumer service, and then write about it on her blog when she came home. Slightly more motivated she left for work, where she proceeded to endure the worst shift of her life full of customers shouting over the phone, non-stop orders, NO tips, and to top it all off- spilling soy sauce on a customer’s coat*.

Ah, isn’t it great when the universe has a different plan for you?

 

* This would have been a great moment to have the ground open up and swallow everything down.

Once again, sorry to any frustrated followers who wondered if I had fled the country and resumed a new identity, I AM BACK and hope to be around here more often.

’till next time

FULL SPIRAL

My birthday is coming up*

Despite the fact that we are hurtling towards 2018 at full speed**, it was this realization that made me fully appreciate all that I have been through in the past year.

Not to sound too dramatic, but to call it A Year From Hell would not be too much of an overstatement. When you’re going through tough times it generally feels like it is not going to end. It feels like you have been sucked in to a black hole with no way out. Like you got so used to drowning you are no longer looking for the sailboat or rescue helicopter, but are fine to grab on to a loose object at sea, hold on for a bit and then get back at it. At least you pretend you’re fine. You put on an act so convincing you start to believe the lies you are telling everyone else. You stop expecting it to go away. It’s like you got on a terrifying ride at the amusement park and you just close your eyes and wait for it to be over without really believing it will. You can’t get anything done. Not really. You think you are, you think you are managing, that you are pushing through. But in reality you are just going through the motions. And then slowly that stops too until you are just waking up every morning and making sure you BREATHE.

I am sitting here and thinking of where I was on my last birthday and where I am now. How eternally grateful I am that change is possible and inevitable and will always come even when I can’t see it. How even though it is probably the most cliche thing I could write right now (and I am hating myself a little just for actually putting it down here) the night does eventually end and the sun will rise *Gandalf voice: on the third day, look to the sun*.

I think on how much things have changed since I sat to write my first post. I think of the reasons that brought me to do it. How alone I felt, how scared. I opened this blog to let some of the voices in my head quiet down, and to see if maybe there are some other people out there in the world that feel something close to what I feel, that are dealing with something like I am dealing with. Talking about my anxiety with someone I knew in real life seemed nothing short of impossible. And keeping it to myself had started to make me explode. So I wrote it all down here, and felt safe in the anonymity of the internet.

About two weeks ago I told my three best friends. Told them I had general anxiety disorder, had had it for my whole life. That last year things had just gotten too intense and I had finally sought professional help and started medication. And that I now feel like a new person, the real me. I told them all of it. It happened easily and naturally and I didn’t even cry once while talking about it something that up until then had been a wild dream. Most importantly, they understood. Or at least- they didn’t judge, or look at me any differently after. I think in some part of my mind I knew they wouldn’t. They are my closest friends after all. But a much larger part of my mind was scared sh*tless. That they wouldn’t understand, that no one would ever understand.

And so I am writing this post, to close a bit of the circle I have had, and start a new one. A spiral, that hopefully will make it’s path  continuously upwards this time instead of down in to the seemingly endless dark. To thank all you anonymous readers for your anonymous support. And to send out a message to any old me’s reading this, searching for anyone who is feeling what they feel right now, who is dealing with what they are dealing right now; YOU ARE NOT ALONE. And even though it may feel like it is never going to end- IT CAN AND IT WILL. Ask for help, don’t try and go it alone. And when you are ready, tell your friends.

And don’t forget to love yourself even when you might hate yourself.

 

 

*this post has sat in my drafts unfinished for about a month. needles to say my birthday has come and gone. Don’t worry I celebrated.

** are two days in to 2018. Belated Happy New Year all

 

 

A poem

I’ve never studied poetry or anything but this week during a slow shift at work the words just sort of fell in to my head and I decided to share it with the bloggersphere just for fun and maybe to get some feedback..there’s no specific structure to it and it doesn’t all rhyme but it made sense in my head with the beats I heard inside..

let me know what you think, what you feel- I’d love to hear!

 

When the sky is too big
And the night feels so small.
How the mind hunts
Endlessly
and the heart breathes.
and bleeds.
and sighs.

Then a new day starts
Teeth clenched
Stomach tight
Hands at the ready
To work
To fight

And the stars come out again
And the eyes close.
A breath escapes
Gently first
Then hard
But the mind never stops,

never quiets.

and just a shard

of hope still remains

that the sun will bring a better day again.

 

No good deed

I don’t live and didn’t grow up in america, and while I am familiar with Black Friday  I kind of lost track when Black Friday turned in to #smallbizsat which eventually became #cybermonday and I don’t even remember what Sunday was supposed to be for.

But then I woke up Tuesday morning to all the #givingtuesday ‘s and I decided that this whole hashtag trend is not that bad after all. I even felt like I was on track because late the night before I had done something nice I was feeling pretty good about (And late Monday night can sort of count for Tuesday right?)

I work two jobs to pay for school, rent, bills and other trivial things like food and underwear. One of my jobs is challenging and fulfilling and will hopefully be of importance on my resume. The other is being a waitress. I like it though- the hours are relatively easy, my boss is great, I get pretty good tips, a free meal every shift and I am a people person so I enjoy talking to customers (unless you walk in at 23:00 and ask if we are still open, or can we just order one small thing? takeaway don’t worry…. seriously? Do you not see the chairs piled up, the wash bucket ready and the murderous sleep deprived look on my face??).

Regarding the tips. We divide them up equally between both people on shift(two waitresses, two cooks- its a small place) according to the hours you work, but trainees don’t get tips (for at least the first two weeks). The thing about this system is that for the first three shifts or so it makes sense because the other worker has to do their job and teach you at the same time, but it’s not to hard to catch on and pretty soon you’re doing the work just like anyone else but not getting tipped for it. It’s frustrating and unfair and you don’t say anything because everyone else went through this before and you just want to get through as many shifts as possible and make a good impression so you can get through your training time as quickly as you can. At least that’s what I did. It worked OK.

So Monday night I was working a shift with a trainee and as I gathered up my tips I handed her some of my share. Not half  but not a small amount either. My reasoning was that if she hadn’t been a trainee we would be splitting it anyhow which would leave me with even less, plus I was a trainee myself not too long ago and hated the feeling of going home empty handed while the other girl on shift got the money I worked just as hard for. So I decided to swallow some of (I still kept more then half) my greed and share a bit. Be the change you want in the world and all that. Nice right? I thought so..

So I got home and feeling super good about myself ended up sharing my good deed with my roommates. I’m not a very egocentric or conceited person (at least I hope I’m not) but letting yourself be proud of something good is OK once in awhile and it sort of just slipped out. Even during the telling of the whole thing I heard a little voice telling me that some things are better left unsaid. But I said it, didn’t think much more about it and showed up for work the next day as usual where I was working with a girl I don’t like much.

I will give her the benefit of the doubt by saying she is probably just super stressed about money, but bottom line-she did not stop talking about tips all shift. She eyed every coin dropped in the tip jar, she told me (half jokingly half not I’m still not sure)to pop an extra button on my top, she got way too upset if someone left less then 10%, and basically got on my nerves all night long. When she actually said the words “ugh, why are you not a trainee anymore then I would get all the tips” I snapped. The tip system is the boss’s decision but an attitude of taking advantage like that really pissed me off. So I told her that she needs to chill out, and that I even gave some of my share to a trainee last shift and went home with 20% less god help us all. Not my most mature moment I’ll give you that, but I was annoyed and tired and human. She started a bit at my confession and asked me not to do it again, If I was the only one giving tips to the trainees it would make the rest look bad and this was the system so if I could just stick with it.

I went home with an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach. A small good thing coming from honestly good intentions had crumbled around me and come out the other side all wrong. I hadn’t even thought about how my action might affect others. I was so proud of myself for being just a tiny bit better then the others I didn’t notice I was potentially hurting them. So yeah, it’s not that big a deal and everything was fine no need to be so dramatic. But it got me thinking about Doing Good and how Giving Back and how all of it can turn on us if we are not careful, and don’t keep our ego’s in check. How maybe #givingtuesday doesn’t count as much if you need to tweet about it* .

 

 

 

*I know inspiring others is also important and quite honestly compared to all the other depressing things out there on twitter and news feeds we can probably manage a few mentions of good deeds, but I was making a deeper point so stay with me on this.